iTrust Dynasty
Multi-Generational Family Governance & Wealth Stewardship Trust
Key Features of iTrust Dynasty
iTrust Dynasty is designed for families who want substantial wealth to remain under professional trustee stewardship across several generations rather than automatically passing outright at the next death. It provides a flexible framework for different family branches, important family assets, long-term beneficiary support and family governance, while allowing specialist property, business and international planning to be incorporated where appropriate.
Benefits
Long-Term Family Stewardship
Designed to operate for up to 125 years, iTrust Dynasty can support children, grandchildren and later generations within one continuing family framework, subject to the trust deed and applicable law.
Family Branch Governance
The Trustees can administer different family branches through separate internal Branch Funds, allowing support and stewardship to be tracked without automatically creating fixed shares. Where genuine legal separation is later required, the Trustees can consider creating a formal Branch Trust by deed after tax and legal review.
Separate Trustee Ownership
Assets genuinely transferred to the Trustees are held separately from a beneficiary’s personal ownership. This can provide a stronger layer of protection than an outright inheritance, although divorce, insolvency, creditor and court outcomes depend on the circumstances and cannot be guaranteed.
Intergenerational Wealth Planning
Creates a long-term discretionary framework in which the Trustees can preserve and apply family wealth across generations without requiring it to pass outright at each death. The Settlor can provide guidance through Letters of Wishes and the Family Governance Memorandum, while the Trustees retain legal ownership and fiduciary discretion.
Adaptable Beneficiary Support
The Trustees can adjust the timing and manner of support where a beneficiary is young, vulnerable, financially inexperienced or facing difficult circumstances. They can retain capital, pay providers directly or use documented loans where appropriate.
Special statutory vulnerable-beneficiary tax treatment or means-tested benefit planning requires separate review and is not automatic.
Flexible Distribution Guidance
You can explain preferred ages, milestones and priorities in your Letter of Wishes or Family Governance Memorandum. The Trustees can take that guidance into account while retaining the legal discretion needed to respond to changing circumstances.
Business & Family Wealth Coordination
Where the family owns a trading business, the trust can hold appropriate business interests and coordinate business succession with wider family planning. Business Relief, shareholder rights, personal guarantees and any existing creditor issues are reviewed separately before implementation.
Where business ownership is the dominant planning issue, iTrust Business remains the specialist route.
Property & FVFI Planning
Where appropriate, Dynasty can accept a separately constituted Fixed Value Financial Interest (FVFI) or other properly transferred property interest. Property planning is reviewed for valuation, affordability, lender requirements, IHT, Gift With Reservation, POAT, CGT, SDLT and probate consequences before implementation.
If the client’s principal issue is simply their home, Home Shield should ordinarily be used instead of Dynasty.
Family Governance
Family Governance
A Family Council can provide an organised forum for family discussion around stewardship, philanthropy, education, business succession and branch priorities. A Family Governance Memorandum can record long-term values and objectives. Both are advisory: the Trustees remain responsible for legal decisions.
Optional Protector
An independent Protector can be appointed for selected major decisions, such as changes of Trustee, early termination, transfer to another trust or the sale of a designated Core Family Asset. The Protector provides oversight rather than day-to-day control and does not replace the Trustees’ fiduciary responsibility.
Core Family Assets
Important family assets — such as a family business, long-held investment, property or heirloom — can be identified for enhanced governance. The Trustees can take the family’s long-term objectives into account and, where selected, a Protector can have an approval role before a major sale or restructuring.
Trustees cannot be forced to retain an asset where doing so would conflict with proper fiduciary administration.
Additional Features
Included with your trust at no extra cost
Continuity After Incapacity
The trust continues if a Settlor loses capacity, allowing the Trustees to keep administering trust-owned property without the structure ending. This operates alongside, rather than instead of, appropriate Lasting Powers of Attorney for assets and decisions which remain personal to the Settlor.
International Coordination Where Required
Dynasty can accommodate an international element, but overseas assets, foreign-resident beneficiaries and relocation are reviewed jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Where cross-border issues are a central feature of the planning, the specialist international proposition may be more appropriate.
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Long-Term Tax-Aware Stewardship
Dynasty is administered with the tax consequences of gifts, investment, distributions and succession in mind. It will ordinarily fall within the relevant-property regime, including potential ten-year and exit charges, and tax treatment depends on the assets and transactions involved.
You can set out long-term priorities through the trust deed, Letters of Wishes and Family Governance Memorandum, while professional Trustees provide continuing stewardship and independent decision-making.
Assets already legally owned by the Trustees do not normally need to pass through a Settlor’s estate merely to establish title on death. Property never transferred to the Trustees remains outside the trust and may still require probate or administration.
Trust and tax outcomes depend on the assets transferred, the terms of the trust, the circumstances of the parties and the law applying at the relevant time. Trustee ownership can provide long-term continuity and separation from outright personal ownership, but no trust can guarantee immunity from tax, divorce, creditors, court powers or future legal challenge.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is iTrust Dynasty?
Dynasty planning is intended for larger or more complex estates where the family wishes to preserve a structured approach across several generations.
Why would a trust continue for grandchildren and later generations?
Because repeatedly distributing substantial family wealth outright after each death can expose it to the personal circumstances of each generation.
A continuing structure allows trustees to preserve and apply wealth across different family branches over time.
Does that mean beneficiaries can never receive assets outright?
No.
The trustees can make distributions where appropriate.
The distinction is that they are not automatically required to dismantle the entire structure.
Can beneficiaries demand money from the trust?
Not simply because they are discretionary beneficiaries.
They can ask the trustees to consider assisting them, but they do not normally have an automatic right to demand a particular sum.
Important information
Important information: The benefits described are general illustrations of how the relevant iTrust may operate when appropriately structured and funded. Actual legal, tax and asset-protection outcomes depend on individual circumstances, the assets involved, the terms of the trust and any supplemental instruments, effective implementation and applicable law at the relevant time. Trustee decisions remain subject to the trust deed and their legal duties. Tax treatment and protection from third-party claims cannot be guaranteed and specialist advice may be required.
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